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Hack turns GIMP into Photoshop Look-alike
Mr_Silver writes "One of the many complaints about the GIMP is that of its user interface and how it should be more like Photoshop. If you feel that this is true then Scott Moschella has hacked together GimpShop which turns GIMP's user interface into something more akin to Photoshop for OSX. However, if you're not running that operating system, fret not, because there is a version for Linux too."
and take it out to dinner, it's still a pig in a dress, not a girlfriend.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Now if only someone would hack it into a photoshop do-alike.
from Adobe lawyers in three, two, one....
What post? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!
Gimp: New and improved. I love the photoshop look and feel. Now I can enjoy the look of photoshop with the functionality of Gimp.
Linux blog http://nsajeff.com/blog
It might be a good idea to seed a torrent for this before the 40Mb downloads crush his server.
For those who don't follow gimp development, I think this has been one of the often requested "features" for many years. Gimp developers usually say if you want it - do it yourself. Finally someone did.
The MacGIMP web site has the download link for the MacOSX disk image here.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Yeah, but too bad that The Gimp does not support 16bpp (no, CinePaint does not do what I want) and it doesn't support "Crop and Rotate" the way Photoshop does (very convenient trick to implement both in a single keystroke). These two features are what keeping me back from using Gimp for my photography.
Until that day comes, Photoshop it is.
This is really fantastic. A windows port is an obvious need.
Actually totally copying photoshop is taking things pretty far! I'd have settled for a simple normal window model for each platform. Cool though.
This WILL reduce barriers to entry very dramatically. Always was curious that GIMP put together a nice package, but made it so awakward to use.
is cmyk. My boss is ready to buy 5 licenses for Adobe CS2, and I'd love to save him a few grand.
Certainly a step in the right direction, only in the sense from what the page says, it's a vast improvement in the interface over gimp. That being said, it does fall into the same trap as other OSS project like to be in, mimicking. If a developer wants his/her project to be noticed not only does it have to do what the competition does, it has to have some added value over the competition. Price isn't necessarily a good way to standout, people are more than willing to pay for something they perceive as better. It would be nice if there were more publicly done research into interface design, OSS projects would benefit greatly from it.
As a OS X user, I would also say anything that requires X11 is not a native OS X application. With no core OS X technology support (little things like colorsync, quicktime, etc), Gimp will really never take off on OS X. I personally will stick to using photoshop.
Burn Hollywood Burn
If it (the PS-lookalike code) was contributed back upstream (which it doesn't have to be, but the code itself must still be available to those who download the binary in order to comply with the GPL) I do not think the GIMP developers would accept it since it then would no longer conform as it does to GNOME's Human Interface Guidelines.
Yes, GIMP is open source (GPL)
The project has to accept the changes, my guess is they didn't want to have a photoshop clone interface. But that doesn't mean you cannot release a patch yourself, which is what happened here.
Yes - they do share a lot of the features.
:)
But take it from someone who's been using photoshop since around version 4.0 (which begat 5, then 5.5, then 6, then 7, and now CS, just FYI), it is still drastically different.
I personally can't use it, because I use so many keyboard shortcuts, within a matter of about 15 seconds of using the gimp, I'm so violently frustrated I want to punch a hole in my monitor.
So, with that said - I need to give this a try
This should help the GIMP gain greater acceptance. Rather than getting a Photoshop-oriented book, and then translating the lessons into Gimpese, users can go directly. Hopefully this will encourage more people to try, use, and promote The GIMP, while producing better photos in the process.
Ob. Disclaimer: I've used the GIMP since 0.54 on SGI, and think it hit a peak of usability somewhere around 1.1. The newer features are nice, but I'm glad someone took a stand and wrote an alternative. With this interface, it's a great alternative to Elements, and will hopefully cause Free Software to be used in more environments than before.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
What about us poor Windows users? There are quite a lot of us, and I'm sure you would want to educate us heathens to the benifits of open source software. Somebody please port it!
Does that matter? Well, it does to some.
A bigger factor I think is the interface. I doubt one user in 10 could figure out how to draw a line in the Gimp without looking it up. (Anti-Hint: there's no line tool!)
However I think the single biggest boon to Gimp would be if Adobe found a way to stop PhotoShop piracy, and chose to do so.
Here
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
There's a Fedora Core 2 RPM here:
:-/).
Code Mills
Good luck with anything else (the site with the source is slashdotted now
Looking for a hack to make PhotoShop look like The GIMP. Tearoff menus would be a nice start.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Feel free to snag the files from me (can handle a few hundred GBs)
GIMPshop.dmg.tbz
GIMPshop-source-2.2.4.tbz
May this post be indexed by spiders, and archived for all to see as my Internet epitaph.
What do you mean there's no line tool? You click on the little thing that looks like a "pencil." Then you "draw" with it.
If you want your line straight, hold down Shift while you do the above.
Admittedly, the gimp interface isn't simple. I'd complain more about drawing an empty rectangle: select "region" tool, select a rectangular region, then "Edit->Stroke". Not easy to figure out the first time.
It's really quite amazing how negative many people are.
User: "Wah! Gimp doesn't look like photoshop!"
Dev: "Here, we recreated the photoshop interface for Gimp. You may be more comfortable with it now"
User: "Wah! Gimp doesn't act like photoshop!"
Holy shit people. The Gimp rocks, be thankful for that. Yes it doesn't have some of photoshop's features, but most people don't need those features anyway. You can't tell me most people are professional graphic artists or work in a print shop. For those people, get Photoshop, for everyone else, get the Gimp. Would you rather spend 700 bucks, or an extra 5 minutes figuring soemthing out?
Unless of course, you have no ethical problem with illegaly copying software, in which case you might as well get Photoshop for your l33t h4x0r graphics.
you might want to check here :)
have fun!!
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
8 bits per channel
3 channels per pixel
= 24 bits per pixel
Adobe's interfaces tend to be pretty bad, actually, but they are an improvement on the GIMP's in some respects. I wonder if GimpShop really manages to incorporate the subtle things that give Photoshop an advantage, though...
Also, can we PLEASE get a name that doesn't contain the world "GIMP"? Pretty please? Pleeeease?
DNA just wants to be free...
.... I WANT A GODDAMNED FOSS PHOTOSHOP CLONE. >:|
:P
It's the only piece of pay software I use, and it's been UNuseable for my needs since v.6 came out- and it keeps getting more bloated, slower, and less useable as time goes by. It really burns my ass that they changed a lot of the key bindings (FOR NO REASON) with v.6 and give the user NO way to actually edit a key config for themselves. Games have been doing this for years and MS Office is extensively customizeable... you'd think Adobe would get on board but NOOOOOO.
I absolutely hate Adobe The Company, and I absolutely cannot use anything that doesn't open at least ps5.5 documents- GIMP'll do it, but kill your blending modes, masks, and fonts goodbye. Guess what I use a lot of.
So I'm stuck getting humped in the ass by Adobe's PCP-laced view of What Photoshop Should Be. Programmers- picture your text editor changing keybinds and workflow with every revision, and you CAN'T CHANGE IT. You either wouldn't upgrade or you'd switch, wouldn't you?
Anyway. I want a drop-in replacement for Photoshop. I don't care if it's slightly different so long as the interface remains the same- six years of using Photoshop 5.x has given me the ability to weild the program without even thinking about it, and one of the things that frustrates artists (aside from being forced to use shitty software) is having to learn NEW software. We just want to make art. You can't expect us to learn perl or ruby or whateverthefuck GIMP script-fu uses instead of making actions, document compatability is a must (if I'm to get rid of photoshop, GIMP needs to be able to handle a few thousand photoshop files with all kinds of funky blending modes and layer effects and so forth and it needs to be able to handle it all perfectly (especially text).... and it's a long way from doing so.).
There's also the meta key thing. Using control as a meta for a longtime mac user is like trying to answer the phone with your foot- it Does Not Work. That's gotta be my biggest complaint about these so-called X windows "ports" to MacOS X - it ain't a port if it ain't localized as much as you can make it.... and OS X (and MacOS) apps use the apple key as the meta key, dammit. It's right next to the space bar- makes it real easy to hit both with the thumb, etc, etc.
I could keep going, but I just came off an Enemy Terrirory server that got swarmed by a dorm full of teamkilling assholes, so now's a good time to stop.
However I think the single biggest boon to Gimp would be if Adobe found a way to stop PhotoShop piracy, and chose to do so.
Adobe doesn't care about piracy that much, it's just education to them until someone gets a good job or black bottom line. Smart marketing ploy an old co-worker of mine told me about.... If you only pick on people with money that aren't paying their fair share, you're going to end up with more money in the end because eventually, people who like your software will buy it and use it, and if it's good software they will make money doing so.
My little site.
Well, considering that it was a Mac user who did this, and then a Linux user ported it, I think the question should be: why aren't Windows users bothering to port it themselves?
Don't just expect people to do this for you. Those who run Linux and OS X have no real need for Windows. It might be frustrating, but, well, tough.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Sven Neumann AKA neo is working on real Colour Management as one of the many, many plates he has in the air. Expect to see it surface before GIMP 2.4.
Arbitrary colour channel depths is something of an elephant in the room at the moment. It was supposed to be inherent in a particular supporting library, but development on that library seems ot have petered out.
The people who are actually doing stuff do have this in mind, though, and regularly get asked about it, so it will happen, even if only to stop the whining.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Photoshop Elements is $63 after rebates on Amazon as we type.
For most of the crowd, Elements will be more than enough. For photography/graphic arts/etc students who need more, there's an educational version.
If you're one of the few image editing professionals that needs the full Photoshop, you're probably making enough to justify Photoshop as a business expense.
Photoshop is one of those apps that targets the professional class. Adobe doesn't care about that 90% of the pirates who warez the software and use it once a month to airbrush themselves into Natalie Portman's publicity shot. Adobe cares about the design shops who buy the legal version and use it eight hours a day, every day. There are enough of these folks paying full price to cover the development costs, and turn a nice profit besides. Everyone else can use Elements, or the GIMP.
Let me tell you a story. My dad asks me if he should pirate photoshop. I told him no, said the reasons for why most ways of pirating are bad (possible trojeans, lawsuits, etc). So he asks me what should he do. So I told him about GIMP. His response was why would he use inferior tools. So I said what about paint shop pro. He responded inferior and costly. So I told him about the low cost version of photoshop (stripped down a bit). He looked at it and his response was that important features are missing from it. I told him he does not need those features, and his response was what if I do.
Basically Adobe runs into the problem where every person that wants to do image editing is now thinking "photoshop or bust". And all of those types will end up pirating it or not doing any image editing at all. I think my dad went the no editing at all route, because he wanted to only use photoshop for editing (not that he knows how).
badness 10000
You know, Mac OS X solves that problem -- all you need is visual feedback. In iTunes, there's a button that you click to make a playlist. If you option-click it, you make a smart playlist. How do people know they can do that? Simple: when you hold down the option key, the icon on the button changes from a "+" (with tooltip "create a playlist") to a gear (with tooltip "create a smart playlist"). Adding this kind of visual feedback to all of GIMP would go a long way towards making it more usable.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Jokes aside, if you've invested years of effort into Photoshop at work, this is a nice way to carry that deeply-ingrained UI comfort into a tool that is free in both senses of the word. I use GIMP once and a while, but the UI differences between it and Photoshop (which I must use for work) are too jarring, so I end up booting my work laptop instead.
Sometimes those reasons are economic, rather than technical. I can't answer for why the OP has switched back and forth, but I've sometimes used photoshop because a client specifically wanted me to - they wanted not just complete illustrations but some of the seperate layers and intermediate work files to pass on to others, plus assurance these would look right/work in photoshop. In the end, a requirement such as that means it's simply easier to do the whole project start to finish there.
Also, there are lots of often pricy special filters that are not part of photoshop itself, but were made by third party developers specifically as add ons for it, and if you want to use one of these, it pretty much dictates using photoshop. Most of this can be avoided by writing your own filter params for freeware programs, but a.) you have to know how, b.) it can take a little time, and deadlines don't care, and c.) some shops' legal types are actually worried this skirts too close to violating a EULA clause against reverse engineering.
(I also started doing illustrations using a bunch of small, limited freeware tools, and often had to switch twenty times between three or four of em to finish a single small project, so I've gotten strongly biased against swapping partially completed files around, probably more than most - maybe this colors my opinions above).
Who is John Cabal?
Your dad's an idiot.
You're doing it wrong.
He is not the only one.
badness 10000
I made some "drop-in replacement" gimp packages for debian sid (i386 and amd64). I just built this modified source using the package rules from the "real" debian gimp. Because I didn't change the name, if you install these and then apt-get upgrade in the future, they will be replaced by the stock debian packages. You can get them here:
http://cmb.phys.cwru.edu/kisner/gimpshop/
Anyway, at least it is an easy way to install and check it out.
-Ted
GIMPshop torrent at:
http://pipe.cs.dartmouth.edu/torrents/
> If you want your line straight, hold down Shift while you do the above.
Shit, and all these years I've been using a damned ruler on my mouse pad!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
this hack, that turns Gimp into money.
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
You are not an expert. Do you know anything about colour management? Those things certainly slow things down, but they are not the be all and end all of colour management. Depending on how you do things, you can just get a profile connection space, get an profile for your input device (scanner, camera, whatever), transform it into a wider colour space like CIE-LAB (etc), then on the screen apply a screen profile to see what you image looks like or if you want to print the image/document/whatever apply an output profile and spit out the data. None of these things are patented.
I suppose my original question was stupid, to be honest. Really, some type of colour management should be applied at a different level - like into GNOME or KDE in a similar way that Apple does their colour management via ColorSync. Still Adobe has their own colour management engine. They spend money on them and probably patented various things, but I see no reason why Gimp couldn't have SOMETHING. But then again, I'm not a developer. Oh, and this isn't a whinge - I'm VERY happy with Gimp and the developers should be congratulated on a mighty fine application.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I was more responding to the original poster who seemed to think it was his God given right to have a port done for Windows. My response is that people who run Windows should do the port, not people who don't even run that operating system!
C'mon already. If a Linux user said that to a person who solely compiles an OSS app in Visual C++, what sort of answer do you think they would give them? Personally, I think it's pretty good that they have stuff already.
I can't understand the argument that people who write free software (free as in beer and free as in speech) should HAVE to do a port to Windows! They don't get paid for it, they don't have a responsibility to any of you! It's a priviledge, not a right to have this stuff.
Hence my sheesh.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I agree. I find the irony of Windows users screaming for ports of Linux software quite amusing, considering that it was only a few years ago that the situation was quite different (Linux users were screaming for Windows ports of software).
Payback sucks, huh?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The problem is that most people learned graphism on softwares like PSP or Photoshop, very centralized applications with a single monolithic window holding all the informations&options.
Gimp has a nice interface in itself, but when you switch from PSP/Pshop (or to them, as uncle), the softwares are so many worlds apart UI-wise that you're plain and simply lost.
And you therefore consider the new software (whichever it is) to be "a damn load of crap cause i can't find any of the tools/options/boxes of chocolate i'm looking for"
In a nutshell, the interface elements people don't like in The Gimp (when they have issues with the interface) are: all of them, because they're too different from Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro's
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Believe it or not, even by BSA's numbers, piracy in the western world isn't that high. No, seriously, look at their breakdown by states in the USA, for example. You'll notice that no state exceeds some 40% and some are in the single digit range.
And bear in mind that the BSA is basically a sock-puppet that exists only to whine about piracy, and how some chinese kid pirating 3DSMax to mod a $40 game actually represents a $6000 loss for a company. (Surely _everyone_ would pay $6000, even in countries where it means 6 years' salary, to mod a $40 game, if it wasn't for piracy. Not.)
BSA's only reason to exist is to cry wolf. So they do it lots. The'll even classify the neighbour's dog as a wolf because it sorta looks like it. Or as I usually say, there's a reason there's BS in BSA.
So if even their inflated numbers don't say 100%, sorry, I don't believe the fallacy that goes "they've all pirated <insert software title>".
The fact which some people fail to understand is that a helluva lot of us actually pay for software. Or, to open that can of worms too, for music.
Why would someone in their right mind pay for commercial software instead of (A) using some free crap, or (B) pirating it?
Well, point A is easy: because often we actually don't find the free one to do the same, or have the same usability. Sometimes it's cheaper to pay for something than to spend weeks making the free version work, or learning its quirks. Time is money, and mine is pretty expensive.
Point B actually boils down to personal ethics: either you're a thief or you aren't. If you are, I don't expect you to understand why someone would prefer buying stuff if shoplifting it was easy. If you aren't, then you can understand that most people wouldn't shoplift even if shops were completely non-supervised.
It also illustrates another point: true, not everyone can afford Photoshop. So some buy Paintshop Pro instead.
The world isn't made of only extremes. In the real world there are a lot of shades of grey in between owning a Ferrari and walking to work.
The same applies or rather should apply to software too: there are (and should be more) choices between the most expensive version (even by piracy) or something free (again, sometimes "free" via piracy, as in using a SN generator on a shareware version.) Paintshop is just one such example of an in-between piece of software. Others include, for example, using Milkshape instead of 3DSMax.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Son, I need a new car. Steal me a Bentley"
"But Dad, you can afford a Mercedes!"
"Why would I want to drive an inferior car?"
"Son, I'm thirsty. Steal me some Crystal."
"But Dad, we have some nice wine in the fridge!"
"Inferior!"
"Well, OK, I have just enough money for a bottle of Moet."
"Inferior and costly!"
"Son, I'm horny. Go kidnap Natalie Portman."
"But Dad, what about Mom!"
"Natalie Portman or bust!"
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
No problem. Menus, keybindings, icons and the like are all themable. I actually don't understand why the author (*sigh*) of this GIMP ripoff claims that he edited hundreds of files. The menu hierarchies are defined in a handful of XML files; all strings are translatable and can be changed by adding a new language ("en_PS" ?!). Unfortunately the "author" doesn't provide a diff of the changes. I am afraid that he did actually change the strings in the code. This will make it very difficult to keep up with upstream changes and it renders all translations invalid (GIMPs UI is translated into more than 40 languages). Anyway, this guy refused to even try to work with the GIMP development team. I asked him to join the GIMP menu reorganization effort but got no response whatsoever.